REVIEW: AxxonSmart free NVR Software - cctvforum exclusive

Based on multiple requests, I tried AxxonSmart from the Russian company Axxonsoft. Its free for up to 16 cameras and up to 1TB of storage. It looked good initially but and has awesome features to do analytics and look harmless enough.

They claim to use in camera motion detection, but there's a caveat, they say only Axis or Sony cameras. I tried 2 different Axis cameras with no luck, couldn't even get video. Tried a simple Panasonic BL-C230a, fairly common camera and also, no luck, not supportted and didn't work when I tried the setting of a similar model. All my ACTi cameras worked fine with it though. Had a long list of supported cameras.

While the software is free, the hardware is not. I would say it take a full core (older i7) to do motion detect event processing per 1.3 MP camera. With no live viewing, I had two cameras recording and easily sucked up 50% of my quad core computer in the background. When I live viewed 4 1.3MP cameras at the same time 2 were armed to record, the CPU was pegged at 99-100% and it took a quite a bit of time to get to the point where I can kill the processes. Most of my cameras do not have dual streaming, but the one that did, I was able to set viewing at VGA and recording at full resolution. This did not help much. I tried it with 4 cameras armed for motion detection, the software just froze, waited a few minutes and couldn't get an image of any cameras.

The install process was also painfully slow. It installs a few 3rd party products like PostgreSQL database. When you un-install, it leaves much of this stuff there for you to cleanup. So now I have to figure out how to uninstall it all.

Your mileage may vary and it's free but my recomendation is to stay away from this software. Their manual makes server recomendations but they are based on VGA cameras. Here's the link if you want to try it - http://www.axxonsoft.com/products/axxon_smart/smart_start.php

The install process was also painfully slow. It installs a few 3rd party products like PostgreSQL database. When you un-install, it leaves much of this stuff there for you to cleanup. So now I have to figure out how to uninstall it all.

Where possible...free VMware ESXi 5. Need a new machine - no problem, clone and you are done. Plus you can snapshot and roll back. Of course you can also do that in Windows (mostly) if you have System Restore turned on.

I've just started looking but what amazes me is just how much NVR software is out there. What also amazes me is how much of it is just junk. Keep up the NVR reviews - you are making the internet a better place.

Thanks for saving me a ton of trouble!

David

I actually have VMWare Server on my desktop, use it mostly to test Linux stuff. I know I can setup a VM with Windows but that would take longer. I was able to go into control panel, programs and features, sort the installed software by install date and click on each on to uninstall so it's gone. It's not like viruses, it's just they have different components to their software, not all gets uninstalled when you run their uninstaller.

So far, the best bargain is BlueIris. Not free, but at $50 it's close enough and how can you beat $50 per server for the level of support you get. You need a decent computer to run it, but nowhere near Axxon's requirements.

I had the same problems with Axxon Smart. I really wanted it to work, but I finally gave up on it. At least now I know it wasn't just me. I didn't think it was any more CPU hungry than BlueIris, but the user interface was painfully slow to respond. One positive thing is that the software based intelligent analytic features and alerts seemed to work well.

I would still be using Blue Iris if I could get a good quality MJPEG stream from my 2MP Dynacolor cams. I can get a good picture with h.264 but my CPU can't handle four of them it so I switched to MJPEG and the picture is terrible. I can't figure it out, I can stream MJPEG to any other software and get a good picture.

I didnt have much of a problem with Axxon slowing down my computer, with Milestone on the other hand, it killed my computer. But now that you speak of blue-iris, I just downloaded it today and am trying to get the RTSP stream going, but the place where I put the RTSP stream doesnt make alot of sense to me. Basically this is the RTSP string I put in VLC to make it work in VLC

rtsp://admin:admin@192.168.1.108/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=1

Port 554 is for RTSP. What I dont get on Blue-Iris is there are a few different RTSP things to choose from and then there are several different fields to put stuff into.

Do you have any tips or can you give some screenshots on how you think the above string should be put into blue-iris. I have tried a few different ways but just cant get it to work.

**** edit: nevermind, I got it working on blue iris, just had to doctor up the string a little. Got it to work on our IP cams, but if I increase the frame rate, the video snags up quite a bit, if its 30FPS, the video just really slows down, its like its in slow motion, even in D1 resolution. Pretty cool little program though, Blue Iris that is. I was amazed at all the features for such a good price.

Axxon is fine if all you want to do is view live video. As soon as you setup recording and arm the cameras, it starts dropping off at a steady 1 core per camera, not even the 2MP you have Sean, but 1.3MP cameras. If I disarm a camera it freed up the core. The behaviour is pretty consistant.

As for BlueIris, your best bet is to email Ken at support@blueirissoftware.com and if you provide him remote access to the camera, he can see the errant behaviour and provide a workaround or provide support directly for your brand of camera.

I see, yeah I didnt even get into depth on the recording side, good to know, thanks for the review, thats why I wanted you to do it, so you could check out the details.

I will email Ken, looks like a pretty cool program.

Has anyone tried the newer version? Axxon Next.

Yes,

We have deployed some systems with Axxon Next. There is 3.6.1.1598 release now with some fixed bugs.

The CPU load is not as mentioned, we deployed some small machines with 16ch encoder card from Axxon (ITV) based on Intel i3-3220 processors and it utilizes about 50% of CPU with object detection and live video (object detection is detecting solo objects in the picture and generate the metadatas of theese objects like dimensions, speed, color, vector...and do detections based on theese metadatas). If you deploy it as blind server (without live image, only as recorder), you save huge amount of CPU.

There is a good hardware and storage calculator on Axxon webpage for download where you can check the hardware requirements...

What is your recommended hardware specs to run this software for 1-8 cameras, and 9-16 cameras 2-3MP cameras? How does it compare to Blue iris, that is advantages and disadvantages compared to blue iris? Does the free version have any features that are disabled?

Hi Bozman,

I'm not able to compare Axxon Next to Blue Iris, because I've never test BI, nor depoyed it. We are deploying large integrated security systems (cctv, access control, intrusion...linked in one system) based primarilly on Lenel OnGuard and for small or only surveillance cctv systems we are using Axxon Next. As mentioned before, Axxon Next is newer platform than Axxon Smart, which was little buggy. There were also some bugs in Axxon Next at the beginning, but now the latest releases are very stable. And it is still improving, v.4 is coming soon...

If you want to play with it for free, you have 2 options - "trial version" (1 month, working from 8:00-18:00) unlimited features or "free version" limited to 16ch, 1 server and 1TB of storage (the storage is main limitation but you can set up recording only on motion detected to save a storage). So you can take a look on it, it is very user-friendly, featured and support virtually any camera (some native, OnVIF or RTSP as last resort). You can work with 2 streams per camera (OnVIF2.0 too), one for recording in better quality and "zoomed view" and other for view in matrix or for video processing (motion, object detection). As mentioned before, Axxon Next is very featured in video processing, there are many options from simple motion detection to advanced object detection based on object properties (like dimensions, speed, color...) and behavior (like object left in area, dissappearance, loitering, cross line...). All this features are available in free version but only in live mode (so you can use them as recording/alarm trigger or other action - e-mail, SMS...). In "PRO" version you can use it on recorded video for forensic search (if you are looking for red car in a park lot for example). The search is very fast because it is only searching in database of metadata, not recordings - objects' metadata are created regardless the camera is recording to storage or not and can be processed from 1st or 2nd stream - better to use lower quality stream for it. You can switch metadata creating per camera basis if you don't need them on all cameras, of course.

Regarding to storage, Axxon is using its own HDD format if you let it to format the whole partition for storage. The recordings are then saved as one stream to HDD, so disk sectors are stressed equally and if some error on disk occure (bad sector) you loose only some little part of recordings saved on this defective part.

For HW platform recommendation you can use online HW/storage calculator https://sale.axxonsoft.com/calc/calculator.jsf. You must switch the right piece of software at the bottom to get rigth result for it. For storage calculation it is approximative, you can lower the quality, bandwidth (look for actual CBR in calculator) or schedule recording if you want to save the storage. You can also choose the purspose of machine in result (recording, view, client) to get recommendation for server/monitoring station or blind server + monitoring station. "Situation analysis detection" is metadata creation mentioned above, created on server, not client machine. If you ask for my recommendations for HW platform, I recommend Xeon E3 for small servers over E5 because of higher clock speed and lower price, and over "i3/5/7" because of ECC memory for stability and fault tolerant. For client machine and combination of server/client on one machine I recommend i3/5/7 where you can save some budget of graphic card (Intel HD is integrated in CPU and supported by Axxon).

Differencies between free and pro version are only in number of video channels, storage and forensic search (called Motion Quest). All other features are available in free version, including 3D maps and much more. Feel free to test the trial or free version to make your own opinion and let us know your insight or comparison to other system you use. I think you will be very satisfied with Axxon...